Colors

Color (North American English) or colour (Commonwealth English) is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, blue, yellow, etc. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light power versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects or materials based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra. By defining a color space colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates.

Quotes

• The colors of my life
  Are bountiful and bold,
  The purple glow of indigo,
  The gleam of green and gold.
  The splendor of the sunrise,
  The dazzle of a flame,
  The glory of a rainbow,
  I'd put 'em all to shame.
  • Cy Coleman, Barnum (1980)

• From the mingled strength of shade and light
  A new creation rises to my sight,
  Such heav'nly figures from his pencil flow,
  So warm with light his blended colors glow.
  
  • Lord Byron, Monody on the death of the Rt. Hon. R. B. Sheridan, Stanza 3. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
  • Martin Luther King Jr, I Have a Dream (1963)

• I mix them with my brains, sir.
  • John Opie, when asked with what he mixed his colors. See Samuel Smiles, Self Help, Chapter V. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• In nature, light creates the color; in the picture, color creates light. Every color shade emanates a very characteristic light — no substitute is possible.
  • Hans Hofmann, as quoted in Readings in American art, 1900 -1975 (1975) by Barbara Rose, p. 117
  • Variant: In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.

• The fellow mixes blood with his colors.
  • Guido Reni of Peter Paul Rubens. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.

• If you mean that the proximity of one color should give beauty to another that terminates near it, observe the rays of the sun in the composition of the rainbow, the colors of which are generated by the falling rain, when each drop in its descent takes every color of the bow.
  • Leonardo da Vinci Treatise on Painting (c. 1490)

• I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.
  • Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

External links and sources

• Bibliography Database on Color Theory, Buenos Aires University
• Why Should Engineers and Scientists Be Worried About Color?
• Robert Ridgway's A Nomenclature of Colors (1886) and Color Standards and Color Nomenclature (1912) - text-searchable digital facsimiles at Linda Hall Library
• Albert Henry Munsell's A Color Notation, (1907) at Project Gutenberg
• AIC, International Colour Association
• The Effect of Color | OFF BOOK Documentary produced by Off Book (web series
• Study of the history of colors